Free Republic

Aretha Franklin was tracked by the FBI for 40 years as the agency repeatedly sought but ultimately failed to tie the Queen of Soul to “extremists” and “radicals,” newly declassified documents reveal. The 270-page FBI file — obtained by Rolling Stone magazine — details how the feds spied on the “Respect” songstress through “false phone calls, surveillance, infiltration and highly-placed sources” from 1967 to 2007. The FBI’s suspicion of the late star was laid bare in the cache of documents, which included a slew of phrases, such as “black extremists,” “procommunist,” “hate America,” “radical,” “racial violence” and “militant blackpower.” “I’m...

Andrew Weissmann, the lead prosecutor for former special counsel Robert Mueller, said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, was a “whack job” who could be in legal peril over her actions surrounding the 2020 presidential election. Discussing Thomas testifying before the January 6 House Select Committee, Weissmann said, “There’s also sort of her as an exhibit, where I mean, just to put it in your vernacular, she comes off like a whack job. There’s no evidence of the election being stolen. We are a bunch of adults having this conversation, but there’s...

Tuesday on FNC’s “Fox & Friends,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) criticized the investigation and the media for how both were handling the Hunter Biden laptop saga. Graham called for the investigation to follow the standard for former President Donald Trump when he was accused of colluding with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election. “I believe that you should have somebody looking at Hunter Biden other than a Delaware prosecutor,” he said. “We’re having a prosecutor in the guy’s home state. The prosecutor is a fine fellow, but can you imagine what the left would do if I suggested we...

An unredacted, internal Department of Justice memo shows the rationale of its leadership in deciding not to prosecute then-President Donald Trump on obstruction of justice charges following the Mueller report's publication. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) secured the memo's release following a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that the DOJ improperly withheld the memo from the watchdog group, which had sued to obtain it. “Because the department did not tie the memorandum to deliberations about the relevant decision, the department failed to justify its reliance on the deliberative-process privilege,”...

Sometimes it seems like the Boston office of the FBI — dumpster fire of breathtaking corruption and incompetence that it is — serves as a field laboratory for the Democrat briefers in D.C. whose mission it is to crush any opposition to the Deep State. All week long, since the FBI’s Stasi-style raid on Mar-a-Lago, it’s been deja vu all over again for anyone who’s been paying attention to the decades of multiple messes that our local on-the-take G-men have been diving headfirst into. Everything corrupt, illegal or unethical that the FBI does nationally, they did a dry run here...

The evidence is amassed and verified—the only unknown is what Republicans will do next. It could be the whopper of the year. “I can tell you that in every case we follow the facts and the evidence and the law and we do so without regard to politics or ideology,” Matthew Olsen, head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, solemnly assured the House Judiciary Committee during a hearing last week. Olsen was responding to a question by U.S. Representative Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) about the decision to arrest several men for supposedly conspiring to abduct and assassinate Michigan Governor Gretchen...

VIDEOThe most politicized Department Of Justice in History is about to perform Trump-Russia Collusion II. In Trump-Russia Collusion I, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller very quickly realized that there was NO Trump-Russia Collusion so he streeeeeeetched out his fake investigation for over a year so it would affect the 2018 midterm elections. Once those midterm elections were "safely" over, Mueller finally revealed a few months later what he knew from the get-go: there was NO Trump-Russia Collusion.Skip forward a few years and we now appear on the verge of Trump-Russia Collusion II with similarly NO evidence. The January 6 Kangaroo Committee...

Newly released notes taken by high-level Department of Justice (DOJ) officials during a March 6, 2017, meeting with FBI leadership expose some of the lengths the FBI engaged in to cover up its spying on the 2016 campaign of President Donald Trump. The notes were released on May 8 by lawyers representing former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann as part of an effort to clear him on charges of having lied to the FBI. The notes, in reality, appear to do little to exonerate Sussmann but do provide quite a bit of information on the FBI. The meeting at...

Sussmann trial testimony confirms earlier CIA, FBI evidence that Hillary Clinton approved dirtying up Trump with unproven Russia allegations. In an era where the hunt for disinformation has become a political obsession, Hillary Clinton has mostly escaped having to answer what role she played in spreading the false Russia collusion narrative that gripped America for nearly three years. On Friday, that dodge ended with a most unlikely witness: her former campaign manager Robby Mook, who was supposed to be a witness helping the defense of her former campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann on a charge of lying to the FBI. Instead,...

Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann is currently on trial for lying to the FBI about his role in pushing data pertaining to alleged communications between Trump and the Russian Alfa Bank. According to Special Counsel John Durham, Sussmann lied when he brought that data to the FBI’s General Counsel James Baker as part of the Clinton campaign’s efforts to trigger an FBI investigation of her opponent, Donald Trump. Specifically, Sussmann allegedly wrote Baker a text message claiming he was not representing anyone in providing the information when, in fact, he was representing the Clinton campaign. In a surprising move,...

Michael Flynn has been cleared, pardoned, set free, and given a clean slate, and still the federal government won’t take its jackboot off the neck of the retired general and short-lived Trump National Security Adviser. A newly discovered document uncovered by Just the News shows that Flynn could have had his reputation back a lot earlier, if Robert Mueller had released an affidavit confirming the story behind the retired general’s 2015 Moscow dinner speech for Russia Today (RT) News. At the event, Flynn sat next to Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The dinner became the key piece of “evidence” used by...

Wednesday, during an appearance on FNC’s “Hannity,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) argued now that the Mueller probe was in the rear-view mirror, more and more was come to light about the 2016 Clinton campaign and had left him questioning what the special counsel investigation led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller had missed. According to the South Carolina Republican lawmaker, a “refund” was warranted on the Mueller investigation.

Why did DARPA claim no DARPA-funded researchers assisted the FBI’s or Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the DNC hack? After spending weeks dismissing concerns about its work with Russia hoax-connected researchers, a newly discovered email from The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to a Georgia Tech researcher with the subject line “Mueller case” casts doubt on DARPA’s denials. Last month, The Federalist first reported that an email exchange obtained from Georgia Tech pursuant to a Right-to-Know request indicated that Special Counsel John Durham’s office was investigating the Democrat National Committee hack. Manos Antonakakis, the Georgia Tech researcher branded “Researcher-1”...

Former Trump campaign chairman and presidential-pardon recipient Paul Manafort was blocked from leaving the country Sunday because his U.S. passport was not valid, a Miami-Dade police spokesperson told NBC News on Wednesday. Manafort, 72, was attempting to fly from Miami to Dubai on a 9:10 p.m. Emirates airline flight when he was denied boarding because of an issue with his passport, the police spokesperson said, confirming a Knewz.com report. The spokesperson said Customs and Border Protection officials on the scene denied his boarding. A CBP spokesman declined comment, saying, "For privacy reasons, U.S. Customs and Border Protection is unable to...

Henry, who served in three FBI field offices and at the bureau’s headquarters, is credited with boosting the FBI’s computer crime and cybersecurity investigative capabilities. He oversaw computer crime investigations spanning the globe, including denial-of-service attacks, bank and corporate breaches, and state-sponsored intrusions. He posted FBI cyberexperts in police agencies around the world, including the Netherlands, Romania, Ukraine and Estonia. He has appeared on “60 Minutes,” “CBS Evening News,” “Good Morning America,” “The Today Show,” “Dateline,” “Rock Center with Brian Williams” and C-SPAN. He has been interviewed by Forbes, BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press and USA Today....

Jailhouse letters from the late Boston gangster highlight his will to live despite deteriorating health including eight heart attacks. The letters provided to The Boston Globe by a California woman he corresponded with appear to contradict federal officials who have said Bulger’s health had dramatically improved, making him eligible for a transfer to a West Virginia prison where he was killed. Bulger was 89 when he was fatally beaten last October ... This is a story about Whitey Bulger and the FBI that you’ve never heard, and it would be even more humorous if it didn’t illustrate yet again how...

In a statement to the Guardian, the Us intelligence agency says it bought a license from NSO Group for 'product testing and evaluation only' and not 'operational use' The FBI confirmed on Wednesday that it had purchased Pegasus spyware from Israel's NSO Group, but denied ever using it during an operation. In a statement to the Guardian, the FBI said it purchased the powerful cellphone hacking software in order to "stay abreast of emerging technologies and tradecraft." The US security agency said it bought a "limited license" to use Pegasus for "product testing and evaluation only," and said "there was...

A wealthy Russian businessman indicted in Boston late last year on hacking and insider trading charges could have access to documents and information about the 2016 election hacking in the U.S. Vladislav Klyushin was extradited to the U.S. from Switzerland late last month and charged with overseeing a multinational scam that pried privileged documents that companies were filing with U.S. regulators before they were public, then trading on the information. Among his employees, and also named in the indictment, is Ivan Yermakov – who was among a dozen Russian military intelligence officers former special counsel Robert Mueller indicted in 2018...

Liz Cheney just set the stage for the latest letdown. Donald Trump won’t be charged with insurrection, treason, or sedition. But obstruction may be on the table. History, it appears, is repeating itself—at least when it comes to the latest crusade to destroy Donald Trump and everyone around him. For nearly three years, the American people were warned that Donald Trump had been in cahoots with the Kremlin to rig the 2016 presidential election. Trump-Russia election collusion, the original “stop the steal” campaign—that is, until questioning the outcome of American elections was designated a criminal conspiracy after November 2020—dominated the...

The Washington, D.C.-based Federal Bureau of Investigation has lost all credibility as a disinterested investigatory agency. Now we learn from a whistleblower that the agency was allegedly investigating moms and dads worried about the teaching of critical race theory in their kids' schools. In truth, since 2015, the FBI has been constantly in the news - and mostly in a negative and constitutionally disturbing light. The fired former Director James Comey injected himself into the 2016 political race by constantly editorializing on his ongoing investigation of candidate Hillary Clinton's email leaks. In a bizarre twist, the public learned later that...